Unworthy

I do talking head gigs for PressTV, Tehran’s official English-language service, every few weeks, thinking it is useful for Iranians to hear now and again an American perspective on the many issues that divide us. Most of PressTV‘s American commentators are unknowns who spout a pro-Tehran, anti-American line.

Yesterday’s broadcast included Mohammad Marandi, an articulate and distinguished professor at the University of Tehran. The program is for the most part self-explanatory. I recommend watching it: .
Towards the end Professor Marandi cites an interview by Al Jazeera with retired American General Michael Flynn. This interview is virtually unknown in the US, but plays an outsized role in Iran, where it is taken as crucial evidence that Washington knowingly and intentionally supported the Islamic State in 2012 and has continued to do so. I got little chance to respond on the air, and in any event the Flynn interview, sliced and diced by Russia Today, requires more than a brief comment on TV.

Flynn was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) July 2012-August 2014. Al Jazeera starts the interview citing this apparently archived exchange from Fox News:

Michael Flynn (archive): I’ve been at war with Islam, or a, or a component of Islam, for the last decade.

Mehdi Hasan (VO): And bonded by a common enemy, can the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran finally work out their differences?

Michael Flynn (archive): I could go on and on all day about Iran and their behaviour, you know, and their lies, flat out lies, and then their spewing of constant hatred, no matter whenever they talk.

Funny thing: I never hear Tehran cite that opening line. Nor do they cite the parts of the interview in which Flynn blames “Islam” for extremist ideology.

He goes on to say that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, but so too was the withdrawal:

Michael Flynn: [TALKING OVER Yeah, ]I, I mean, I hate to say it’s not my job but that – my job was to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be, and I will tell you, it goes before 2012. I mean, when we were, when we were in Iraq and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out of Iraq in 2011. I mean, it was very clear what we were, what we were going to face.

Flynn is obviously inarticulate, so it is not very clear what he means, but I imagine he is claiming that he anticipated the rise of  extremists. Then comes this:

Mehdi Hasan: – “declared or undeclared Salafist” – it’s not secret any more, it was released under FOI. The quote is: “There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality in eastern Syria and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian regime.” The US saw the ISIL caliphate coming and did nothing. 

Michael Flynn: Yeah, I think that what we – where we missed the point. I mean, where we totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning. I mean, we’re talking four years now into this effort in Syria. Most people won’t even remember, it’s only been a couple of years: The Free Syrian Army, that movement. I mean, where are they today? Al-Nusra. Where are they today, and what have … how much have they changed? When you don’t get in and help somebody, they’re gonna find other means to achieve their goals. And I think right now, what we have allowed is we’ve got – 

I think what Flynn is saying here is that we were slow to support the moderates and should have done more early in the game, because failure to do so allowed extremism to develop. But that is not what Tehran wants to hear, so they cite this:

Mehdi Hasan: Let me – let me just to, before we move on, just to clarify once more, you are basically saying that even in government at the time, you knew those [Salafist extremist] groups were around. You saw this analysis –

Michael Flynn: [TALKING OVER] Sure.

Mehdi Hasan: – and you were arguing against it. But who wasn’t listening? 

Michael Flynn: I think the administration. 

Mehdi Hasan: So the administration turned a blind eye to your analysis – 

Michael Flynn: I don’t know if they turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision. I think it was a wilful[sic]. 

Mehdi Hasan: A wilful decision to go – support an insurgency that had Salafist, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood?

That’s where Tehran and Moscow like to stop, but Flynn actually went on:

Michael Flynn: [INTERRUPTING] Well, a wilful decision to do what they’re doing, which, which you have to really – you have to really ask the President, what is it that he actually is doing with the, with the policy that is in place, because it is very, very confusing? I’m sitting here today, Mehdi, and I don’t, I can’t tell you exactly what that is, and I’ve been at this for a long time. 

So Flynn said there was a willful decision, but he did not say it was a willful decision to support Salafists, Al Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood. The interviewer asks that question and Flynn refuses to give an answer, saying he doesn’t understand what the Administration was doing and you’ll have to ask the President. Flynn is clearly an opponent of the Obama Administration and doing his best to suggest it is soft on terrorism, but it would have been foolish of him to suggest Washington supported it.

Of course even if Flynn had said what Tehran and Moscow allege, that would only be the view of only one retired general, one with distinctly anti-Muslim, anti-Iranian and anti-Obama views.

Let me be clear on my own view of what happened. The Islamic State of today has its origins in the Al Qaeda-affiliated Islamic State in Iraq (ISI), as Professor Marandi correctly said in the PressTV program. It gained traction in Iraq, especially in 2006/7, due in part to Iran’s ally in Syria, Bashar al Assad, who allowed extremists and supplies to funnel into Iraq from Syria. But by 2010, the Americans had decimated ISI.

It was the chaos in Syria that allowed today’s Islamic State to rise from the ashes. That chaos was due to Bashar al Assad’s military crackdown on the nonviolent rebellion that started in Syria in March 2011. Tehran has supported Assad’s crackdown with oil and money, military advisers and commanders, and Hizbollah and Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops. Few of those efforts, however, have been directed against the Islamic State. That’s why Assad undertook the recent offensive to chase the Islamic State from Palmyra: in order to burnish his credentials as a fighter against extremists, credentials needed at the ongoing UN peace negotiations.

The US, by contrast, has targeted its efforts against IS, both in Syria and in Iraq. US airstrikes as well as assistance to Iraqi forces is entirely focused on IS. The US has also insisted that the rebels in Syria focus their attention on IS, notoriously to the dismay of those who would like the US to provide more support for the fight against the Assad regime. The US may have been much less discriminating in 2012, as General Flynn suggests in the interview, but it is wrong to suggest that Washington ever supported the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Tehran should drop that line, which as I said on PressTV is unworthy.